The Syrian Minister said that the Internet disconnected by terrorists

Syrian Communications Minister said that "terrorists", and not the state, turned off the Internet throughout the country on Thursday, reports Reuters. “It’s not true that the state turned off the Internet. Terrorists attacked Internet lines, with the result that some regions were cut off. ”

The minister also said that engineers are already working on the restoration of communications. Prior to this, it was suggested that the Internet was turned off by the military in response to the successes of the rebels in a country engulfed in civil war. At the same time, CloudFlare conducted an investigation and questioned the Minister’s statement, concluding that the 4 cables could not be physically damaged, and the Internet was turned off by updates in the configuration of the routers.

According to CloudFlare, the monopoly provider in Syria is the state-owned company Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Her AS number is AS29386. Typically, Syria’s connection to the rest of the Internet is provided by transit providers PCCW and Turk Telekom and additionally Telecom Italia and TATA. When the shutdown occurred, BGP routes in the Syrian IP space were simultaneously withdrawn from all transit providers in Syria. As a result, the networks could not send traffic to the Syrian IP space and the country was successfully disconnected from the Internet.
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Syria is connected to the rest of the Internet by 4 physical cables. Three of them pass under the sea and go out in the city of Tartus. The fourth passes overland through Turkey. To turn off the Internet across the country, all four of these cables had to be damaged at the same time. An unlikely scenario.

One of the engineers at CloudFlare recorded a video that shows how network routes were recalled. Syrian Telecommunications (AS29386) is represented by a red dot in the middle of the video. Lines are routes to Syrian transit providers.



At 10:26 UTC, the routes were withdrawn from PCCW and mainly switched to Turk Telekom. The routes with Telecom Italia and TATA were also withdrawn, but this had less impact. Then at 10:29 UTC the routes were withdrawn from Turk Telekom. After that, Syria was actually cut off from the Internet.

CloudFlare suggests that Syria has few border routers. All of them are controlled by Syrian Telecommunications. The way routes were recalled suggests that this was done through updates in the configuration of the routers, and not by physical damage to the cables. The reasons can only guess.